Bits and Pieces

I remember being a pudgy little girl, short hair, dungarees, mostly covered in mud, chewing my Barbie doll and following the "big boys" (most of them around the venerable age of 9). I wanted to, inexplicably, do "boy things". What these boy things were, I never was very clear. But I had a pet theory that it involved climbing a lot. Hence, I would tumble along, being properly ignored by them, until, after seeing me trip on my own shoelaces for the eighteenth time, a rough, kindly "big boy" would take me back home. The message back then was very clear. "This is not for little girls."

I would spend the rest of the evening wailing to my mother about being a girl, and wished that girls my age would care less about their frilled frocks getting torn and more about climbing things.

You see, I am a climber. My motto has forever been "Show wall, will climb." I never enter through gates if I can successfully scale the walls. In fact, I have never really entered parks through gates. Scaling park fences gives me the sort of thrill I get when drinking well made coffee.

But you get older. You do not display ambitions of ever climbing the Everest. You do not expect a twenty one year old in distinctly feminine garb to climb muddy, moss covered walls. An ensemble of eyebrows rise and a twitter of tongues are tutted (Yes, I make up my own collective nouns. It amuses me.) This girl, it is universally announced, has not been brought up correctly. I, unmindful of mostly everything, jump, shake the dust off me and walk away, head held slightly higher.

The new college is built on a hill. The way from the rooms to the college building, hence, is a whirlwind of winding pathways, each leading to the same destination, but catering to different needs. There is the straight road for the females in extremely correct clothing. There is the one which requires a bit of jumping for the health conscious. There is one which has slightly slippery stones for the person who wishes to skate and there is the Magical Road of Obstructions. It involves a fair amount of scrabbling on mossy, moist walls, one after another. For the student who is in a hurry, it is the shortest route available. No self respecting woman ever chooses this route.

Then again, I stopped respecting myself many years back.

There was I, in what was for once, very correct, and incidentally, white, feminine garb, grumblingly going to an early morning class, cursing the sun, daylight and other people, when I saw a couple of "big boys" (These were big, they are doing their Ph.D.) taking the Magical Road of Obstructions. Heedless of correct grab, heedless of gender, heedless of the fact that I did not really know the route too well, I followed them. Climbed a wall. Jumped over a stile. Jumped over a pond. However, correct white garb, being of the very feminine kind, was proving to be restrictive. A kindly boy, after seeing me dither near yet another pond, advised me to take another road. This road, the wise boy said, is not for women.

There I was, against my own gender, fighting for my right to climb a wall, because I was a girl who had not worn her trackpants to college that day. I now had the option of womanfully fighting the inevitable tears and taking the female friendly route. But why? Women had achieved so much. Women...Women had babies. Women could do anything. I just had to jump over a smallish pond and climb more walls.

"Why not," I asked and jumped over the pond.

I did end up getting very mud strewn afterwards.

My six year old self, however, was very pleased.

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The last ode to teenage-ism

Warning : Girlie post

Fellow blogger Doubletake, Doublethink has had a girlhood akin to all girlhoods, mostly spent in waiting for the dream man from the pages of a book (ranging from Danielle Steele to Gone with the wind) to materialize in flesh and of course, fall in love with us. This being the most significant experience for girls all over, one realizes the importance of preserving the essence of our first loves. Thus, while she rots with other more trivial pursuits (like Boards for instance), she, for us to remember her by, has started a meme, as she names it. In her own words,

"I'm starting a meme (muahahhaha). Anyone who has ever fallen in love with her version of the GHM, I tag you. Write a post, it doesn't have to be very big, about that person – literary character, comic book hero, some guy in a movie, a random person you'll never meet – we’ll start a list that will probably never end."

GHM would be the Georgette Heyer Man, a one of a kind lover an impressionable girl can easily be obsessed with. Doubletake has a more detailed description of him in her post.

And so, my GHM....

He arrived in my life at the very naive age of 14. He returned when I was 18. And, of course, till now, he displays no willingness to leave and someone real arrive. Harry Rayburn, or John Eardsley is a cross between Othello and Tarzan. He is rich but has given up all his wealth to seek vengeance for the death and defamation of his friend. He resides alone in an island in Africa and does more or less nothing but brood. Of course, he goes and seeks revenge, is often an impostor in the strangest of ships, is mind numbingly hot and threatens to beat up his love interest black and blue if she even looks at another guy.
A self confessed wife beater, an Etonian who has given up all his wealth for an African island near a waterfall, where he saves drowning damsels and then marries them (if he does marry them, hard to find a registrar in African jungles, I would have guessed). Paleolithic in his passions and general behaviour with the rest of humanity, rude, insolent and a woman hater, he is probably not every woman's dream, or even nightmare, but since the age of 14, Harry Rayburn has been the man I have woefully given my heart too. Of course, the fact that he catches diamond smugglers and can easily murder someone in the heat of anger just adds to his gentlemanly charms.

He is the chief protagonist of Agatha Christie's Man in the Brown Suit, and despite the impression I seem to have given, is wonderfully monogamistic. If it reflects sadly on my literary tastes, yes, I have fallen more in love with Christie characters than any other, except Feluda. And Lord Emsworth. And of course, Psmith. There was also these brief affairs with Rhett Butler, Buntschli, and Flambeau, but the Man in the Brown Suit stands tall and unchallenged.

I request all girls to take this tag up. Even guys if they have had their own female version of the GHM.
So, visitor, you are tagged.

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The Month That Was

As the year ends, I realize I have absolutely nothing to post about. There are no more ideas, no more thoughts, and sadly, no more useless rendezvous in front of the computer. I have suddenly started living usefully. All those hours I would spend in front of my blog, blankly hoping a comment would arrive just by sheer force of will power, have now been replaced by hours I give very serious thoughts to what to wear to this year's new year party. Clothes are now sadly occupying a major part of my brain functioning, thus leading to unfounded comments about my sudden embracing of my femininity. Thus, my year end post is mostly going to be about conversations regarding this and other feminine topics. I assume it would be vastly uninteresting to the male segment of my readership and hence, to entice a bigger audience, this post is being rated as adults only, due to allusions to topics the censor boards happily imagines 17 year olds do not know anything about.

Conversation 1
(Bonky and I, while on one of our expeditions)
P: So, I have been thinking, all these guys I know, they look at me in a very..umm.... asexual manner. What could be the reason? My demeanor?
B: Dude, you realize you just said 'I entreat..' to a guy while trying to juggle two handkerchiefs. While each by themselves are not very appealing, both of them together are fatal for your romantic chances. What you need to do is be more feminine. No more coming to college with unbrushed hair.
P: Feminine huh? So how do you go about this feminine..uh..thingy?

(A few minutes later, the time interim having been spent on saving a centipede from a professor's footsteps)
B: Since we did save it, should we adopt it? It is one of our responsibilities now. You know, once you save someone, you are doomed to protect it for ever?
P: Oooh yes, and you could be its mother. I am obviously the godmother since I am too creeped out to touch it. We could call it Pintoo.
B: Huh? I was thinking of Albuquerque. Why Pintoo?
P: Association of ideas.

(after 5 minutes spent in profound thought)
P: Say, a centipede bites a man, and the man becomes centipedeman, what colour would his costume be?
B: Hey, it could bite us too, so why not centipedewoman?
P: Dude, you really want a hundred legs?
B: We could have retractable legs. Though I wonder what use they would be. Does not look as if a hundred legs make him any faster than two.
P: Uhh...their extreme hairiness which protects us from bullets?
B: (after pondering long and hard) You are right, there can never be a centipedewoman.
P: So, chrome and platinum should be ideal, what?
B: Yup, chrome outfit with platinum legs.
P: That should do it.

Conversation 2
(Berry and I in an auto)
P: So, this femininity thing..I got this new jacket, you know, and it does make me feel very girly, not the usual tomboyish self. I have been thinking, is femininity about what you feel rather than what you look? Coz, I guess I look the same, but you know, the feeling thing is there and are you even listening?
B: You? Feminine??
P: Uh..
*pregnant pause*
B: Can I borrow it?

Conversation 3
(Gupi, Sakes and I, meeting up after two years. The first line spoken goes down in history of first lines spoken between friends after 2 years)

G: Hi, yeah, I need you guys to help me rob a teacher of a law book.
P: Get in the room, if he is there borrow it, if he is not, steal it.
S: But why?
P: Eh? How does that matter?
S: I am sorry. What was I thinking?

(Gap of fifteen minutes)
G: Of course, Sakes can not have non vegetarian.
S: Yes, never had it before. Never will.
P: Er.. you have. Once at school. From my lunch box. Class 7.
S: I was a kid then. I will not be losing my religion over that surely.
P: Ahh, but you see, religion is like virginity. Once its gone, its gone.
S: *blushes*
G: Still the kid, are not you?
P: Say, suppose we end up as single mothers?
G: (dumbfounded) If that happens, one has to be really unlucky. What with all the technology and stuff...
P: Do you deny the possibility completely then?
G: Hmm..OK, what if we do end up as single mothers? How is that fun?
P: But don't you see it? We would have full freedom with its upbringing. He could grow up to be a Kalahari desert tribesman. Or the King of Cannibal Islands!!
G: And eat you?
P: Course we tell him relatives are not food. But it could eat all the people we do not like. We won't even need to worry about disposing the body.
G: Oh no. I am not murdering anyone. I stick only to robbery.
P:Hmm..we could be like Iago, you know. We instigate others to murder and just use the body to feed the kid.
G: You realize we just created a foolproof plan to feed a cannibal child we are supposed to be giving birth to?
P: I know! We rock!

This post, though seemingly senseless and pointless, is meant as a tribute to one of the happiest years of my life. To all the friends and to all the laughter. And Economics. I guess. Someday, you will be my future. I guess its about time I started liking you. You are my New Year's resolution.
And my blog readers.
Thank you.
I will probably be out of ideas till next year.
So here is wishing you a mad and silly New Year.

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